PC Magazine Guide to Digital Photography

You have the camera, or intend to. You have the desire.

Now, you have personalized instruction from PC Magazine

"The play of light and color on the human imagination." That's how Daniel and Sally Wiener Grotta define photography. They'll lead you through choosing a digital camera and using all its amazing features, but photography is more than technology. These renowned experts liberally share their knowledge of lighting, settings, focus, file formats, communicating with pictures, and more. Read a little, then go shoot some pictures, study them, and read some more. See what you and that camera can do -- together.

• Go one-on-one with the pros
• Choose a camera that fits your needs
• Understand resolution, compression, pixels, and file formats
• Use shutter speed, lighting, and depth of field
• Learn about white balance and color adjustment
• Organize your shots on the camera
• Shoot photos for company publications or online auctions
• Pick up tips for getting great photos
• Get your pictures out of the camera, easily
• Edit, print, and e-mail photos

Daniel Grotta and SallyWiener Grotta are top name journalists and consultants in the field of digital photography. In fact, they’ve been covering digital cameras and the industry since the early 1990s. As Amy Wohl, the renown computer analyst, has said, “If you don’t know the Grottas, you don’t know imaging.” Among the earliest photographers to use digital equipment, they broke the story of digital photography for some of the top national magazines (including PC Magazine’s first roundup) and have continued to write about it for many newspapers, magazines, and online publications. Together, they have written more than 1,000 high-tech articles, reviews, columns, and features, plus five (now six) books. In addition, they have lectured and taught digital photography and imaging at many schools, conferences and other venues, including the PC Magazine Digital U traveling workshops, which will be premiering autumn 2004.
The Grottas’ company, DigitalBenchmarks, is an internationally respected independent digital camera and imaging test lab. Using new industry-standard tests that Daniel helped develop, DigitalBenchmarks Lab puts digital cameras and related hardware and software through extensive low-level and experiential tests.
While the Grottas have tested and reviewed most of the digital cameras that have been introduced for more than a decade, technology is only part of the story. The Grottas are professional photographers whose pictures have appeared in many publications throughout the world. They understand what it takes to get a great picture in all kinds of situations, from Antarctica to the Amazon rain forest, from war zones to the most difficult shot . . . the group family picture. Regardless of how many cameras they have handled, they have never lost sight of the whole reason they started with all this . . . their fascination with how much more of the world they can see, enjoy, and capture through a camera lens.
An Internet search on their names will bring up literally many hundreds of hits—mostly links to their reviews, articles, and speaking engagements. Or you can check out their Web sites: www.DigitalBenchmarks.com, www.TheWellConnectedWoman.com, and www.Grotta.net.